


Don't Break This Spell On Me

by UniverseOnHerShoulders



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:01:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25286509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UniverseOnHerShoulders/pseuds/UniverseOnHerShoulders
Summary: In a gloomy hidey hole with the Doctor, Yaz allows her emotions to get the better of her. Desperate to show the Time Lady what she's capable of, she makes a decision that will change everything...
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor/Yasmin Khan
Comments: 4
Kudos: 34





	Don't Break This Spell On Me

**Author's Note:**

> An expansion of [this drabble.](https://universe-on-her-shoulders.tumblr.com/post/619630559681003520/19-i-think-im-in-love-with-you-and-that-scares)

Yaz and the Doctor were crouched together in a cupboard. This would not usually have been a problem, but they had been there for some time and Yaz’s legs were starting to lose feeling, and so she began to straighten up, millimetre by millimetre, trying to avoid making any particularly loud sounds of pain as she did so. The Doctor’s hand squeezed hers warningly, but the need to stand was unavoidable; the pain in her calves was becoming agonising, and she continued upwards until she was stood mostly vertical, leaning against the wall and gasping for breath as the sensation returned to her legs.

Coming here had been her idea; she’d wanted to visit a Victorian costume ball, only she hadn’t bargained on attracting the sort of trouble that seemed to follow their little group wherever they went. That had been foolish of her, really; she ought to have factored that in; ought to have made provisions for chaos to inevitably strike. Instead, she was left with a debilitating sense of guilt as she and the Doctor hid downstairs in the large manor house, while Ryan and Graham… well, Yaz tried not to think about where they might be, or whether they were hurt. She closed her eyes and rested the back of her head against the wall as she fought to uphold her composure, fighting back the tears that had been threatening to spill down her cheeks ever since they’d first broken into a desperate sprint and dived into the drawing room in search of shelter from the monster rampaging around the upper floors. It didn’t do to show the Doctor you were scared, not least because Yaz had a latent worry that if she showed vulnerability in the face of danger then there might be the outside chance of being left behind next time.

The Doctor mirrored her movement after a moment, her hand never leaving Yaz’s, and then the Time Lady asked softly in the darkness: “Are you alright?”

“Yeah,” Yaz breathed, gritting her teeth as the cramping in her legs lessened, and she turned her face away as she felt her lower lip tremble, even though she doubted the Doctor could make her out in the gloom. “Just… legs are sore.”

“Sorry,” the Doctor said at once, looking down at Yaz’s legs and placing a steadying, reassuring hand on her hip as she appraised them in the gloom, skimming her thumb over her hip crease. The touch was electrifying; every nerve cell in Yaz’s body suddenly seemed attuned to the feeling of the Doctor’s palm against the waist of her gown, and in the darkness and the mustiness of the cupboard, she felt a sudden surge of boldness she’d never experienced before, combining with her adrenaline and imbuing her with a sense of complete confidence that she was so often lacking. Looping a thumb under the Doctor’s braces, she pulled the Time Lady towards her and kissed her lightly; the sensation was overwhelming, intoxicating, but the kiss lasted barely longer than a few seconds before reason returned to her, and she realised what she was doing, and Yaz let go of the Doctor as though she’d been burned and dropped her gaze, feeling abruptly embarrassed and twisting her hands together in front of her self-consciously, caught between the urge to apologise and the urge to kiss her friend again.

“What…” the Doctor whispered, her tone baffled as Yaz shuffled as far away from her as she could manage in the tiny cupboard, already mentally kicking herself for her own stupidity; this was the Doctor. Undoubtedly she was beyond such frivolous things as kissing, or feelings. “What was that about?”

“I… it was… it doesn’t matter.”

“That didn’t seem like it didn’t matter,” the Doctor noted, her voice subdued but still gently teasing in a way that only served to make Yaz feel worse. “That seemed like it very much mattered, actually.”

“It’s just… I just… it was a stupid thing to do. And I’d sound stupid trying to… you know… justifying it or whatever, alright?”

“I don’t think anything you could say would be stupid.”

“Well, this is,” Yaz snapped in an undertone, her anger taking her by surprise, and she sensed the Doctor’s shock in response to the edge to her words. “So, stop bloody asking.”

“Shan’t. It’s not like we’ve got anything else to do,” the Doctor sounded maddeningly smug. “Come on. Tell me.”

“No, it’s daft.”

“I bet it isn’t.”

“It _is_.”

“I’ll be the judge of that, only I can’t do that unless you tell me. I mean, I _could_ just read your mind, but that’s not exactly playing fair; I don’t want to intrude upon your thoughts without your consent, because that’s dodgy on a lot of levels, and sometimes I’ve found out rather more than I’ve wanted to while inside people’s heads.”

“Such as?” Yaz asked, partly out of curiosity and partly out of a need to change the subject.

“Things about my friends’ sex lives, and the fact that my wife copped off with… well, a couple of slightly murderous people, usually for reasons of national- or global-ish security. That was the excuse, anyway… I’m not sure exactly how urgent the situation really was, but I can’t exactly judge her, there’s been a fair few…”

“Your…” Yaz felt as though she’d been stabbed; her stomach dropped and her heart seemed to stop beating as she gaped at the Doctor in horror. “Your what?”

“My wife.”

“Your…”

“Wife. Spouse. Matrimonial partner.”

Yaz’s mouth snapped shut and she balled her hands into fists at her sides. Of course the Doctor was married; why wouldn’t she be? She might be an alien but she had still had relationships, and Yaz felt stupid and naïve for ever thinking that the Time Lady could possibly be unattached or interested in her. Of course there was a Mrs Doctor, and of course there was no chance of the Doctor ever looking at her in that way; of course there was someone else on the scene, and of course they were the sort of person to, in the Doctor’s words, ‘cop off with slightly murderous people.’ They sounded bold and daring; adventurous and seductive; the sort of person the Time Lady deserved. The Doctor was never going to look twice at anyone mundane, was she? Never going to look twice at someone as boring as Yaz, and certainly not anyone who cowered in a cupboard in the face of danger.

“What’s wrong?” the Doctor asked with confusion, but Yaz only shook her head impatiently.

“Nothing,” she insisted in a tight, cold voice, and then yanked the door of the cupboard open and steeled herself. “Going to find Ryan and Graham.”

“Yaz-”

She darted out of the confined space before the Doctor could say another word or grab for her, racing out of the room and towards the sounds of screaming from upstairs.

* * *

“It’s alright,” the Doctor murmured, pressing a cold flannel to Yaz’s forehead. Or at least, it had been cold; held against Yaz’s burningly hot skin, it now felt lukewarm in the Doctor’s hands, and the Time Lady considered re-wetting it, but the possibility of leaving her friend, even to make the short trip to the sink, was slim to none. On the bunk before her, Yaz moaned in pain, writhing in discomfort as the fever burned its way through her body, and there was nothing the Doctor could do to help her other than continue mopping at her brow and murmuring quiet words of reassurance that she felt seemed impossibly trite. She felt a surge of helplessness as Yaz let out a prolonged, agonised cry of pain, her body contorting into a painful shape, before she sagged back against the pillows limply, the tension and fight leaving her as twin trails of tears trickled down her cheeks from underneath her closed eyelids.

“It’s alright,” the Doctor breathed again, feeling entirely useless in the face of her friend’s pain. Her mind flashed back to the Victorian mansion; to Yaz’s defiant sprint from their hiding place, and the Doctor’s race after her to prevent her from coming to any harm. She closed her eyes, reliving what had happened for the thousandth time that hour, guilt coursing through her as she pictured it.

_She’d raced up the stairs, the sonic held out in a pale imitation of a weapon. It wasn’t much, but it might be enough to make the creature think twice before harming either of them. An unnatural silence had fallen over the house, and that had somehow been more ominous than the earlier screams and roars; it also meant that her quest to find Yaz would be far more difficult without any auditory clues to guide her._

_She’d pushed open the first door she came to, finding an empty bedroom untouched by chaos or destruction. The second and third door yielded similar results, and then as she’d gone to push open the fourth…_

_A scream, drawn out and agonised, and she’d sprinted over the threshold without hesitation._

_There had been blood everywhere; soaking into the carpet, splashed up the walls, smeared across the furniture. The crumpled bodies of several of the party guests and serving staff were scattered around the room, and on the bed had been Yaz with the creature looming ominously over her, a large chunk of her shoulder missing and blood seeping freely into the already-sodden mattress._

The Doctor didn’t want to recall what she’d done next. She didn’t want to think about the terrible course of action she’d taken, or of carrying Yaz back to the TARDIS with shaking hands, her friend’s blood soaking into her coat with each step she’d taken.

She didn’t want to think about Ryan or Graham’s faces as she’d happened upon them outside the ship’s doors; didn’t want to think about the trail of blood that now marked her path from the console room to the medbay. She twitched the covers away from Yaz, looking at the raw pinkness of her skin where she’d mended her friend’s shoulder, and wincing, nonetheless. Whatever had been in the creature’s venom, it was reacting with Yaz’s immune system, and Yaz let out another agonised whimper, a convulsion moving through her as she began to shiver violently.

The Doctor felt a fresh surge of guilt as she tucked the covers back around Yaz with the utmost care . This was her fault; she’d reacted badly to the unexpected kiss, then somehow – she wasn’t entirely sure how, but she had a strong suspicion – put her foot in it by mentioning River, and Yaz had stormed off in response to her words. She’d been trying to prove herself, but all she’d achieved was this; her own pain and torment, and the enduring misery of the Doctor as she worked desperately hard not only to save Yaz’s life, but also to reduce her suffering. The Doctor hung her head, twisting the flannel in her hands until it dripped a stream of tepid water over her boots; the soft sound of the droplets hitting the leather was enough to bring her back to herself for long enough to assess Yaz’s condition.

Yaz let out another whimper and clutched at the Doctor with damp, sticky hands, her eyes opening a sliver. “Make it stop,” she pleaded, her voice little more than a whisper. “Please, m’sorry, make it stop…”

“I can’t,” the Doctor murmured, her voice cracking with culpability and the sheer weight of self-loathing caused by her inability to help. “I can’t, you just have to… you just have to let it burn itself out.”

Yaz let out a wail of despair, her hands falling back to her sides, and the Doctor bowed her head in shame.

“I’m sorry,” she breathed, knowing Yaz was barely aware of what she was saying and yet still feeling the need to apologise. “Yaz, I’m so sorry…”

“How is she?” a voice asked from behind her, and she yelped, almost dropping the still-warm flannel and turning to see Ryan and Graham stood in the doorway of the medbay, both of them looking past her to Yaz’s trembling form. They’d changed out of their period clothes; the Doctor suddenly became acutely aware that she was still clad in the stained remains of her smart suit and was still drenched in Yaz’s blood, and that Yaz’s ripped ballgown was in a similar state of destruction.

“Not good,” she admitted, her voice trembling with the force of trying not to cry. “I’ve mended her arm, but she… the venom… she’s feverish. It’ll pass – at least I think it will – but she’s in for a long night.”

“Let us help,” Ryan said quietly, reaching for the flannel in the Doctor’s hands, but she shied away from his touch. “What’s wrong?”

“This is… it’s my fault, I should have…” she mumbled, shaking her head emphatically. “You don’t…”

“Doctor, you saved her,” Graham told her in a gentle tone. “If it weren’t for you… I dread to think what might have happened.”

“She wouldn’t have been there at all if it weren’t for me.”

“You can’t think like that, Doc. Come on, let us help,” Graham half-suggested, half-commanded. “You look dead on your feet. Go and get cleaned up, yeah? We can keep an eye on her.”

“But…”

“No buts,” Ryan tried to look assertive as he supported his grandad’s instructions. “Go on. If we need you, we’ll shout.”

The Doctor hesitated for several seconds and then nodded, fussing with the blankets over Yaz and then stepping out of the medbay and heading to her bedroom, where she sagged against the wall and slid down it until she was perched on the floor with her head in her hands. This was very much her fault; she was still acutely aware of that. Graham’s attempts at soothing her had only underlined to her that Yaz would not have even been at the party if it weren’t for her; none of them would have been, they would instead have been safe at home.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered aloud, looking down at her hands and flinching as she found them streaked with blood; her nails were marked with crescent-moons of crimson at the cuticles and under the tips. “All of you, I’m sorry.”

She wished fervently that she hadn’t reacted to Yaz how she had; wished that she’d managed to seize hold of her before she’d left the cupboard; wished she’d been able to run faster. She knew the dangers of living in what-ifs and could-have-beens, and yet she still found herself imagining various scenarios in which her friend hadn’t run from her, startled and hurt, and in which she’d managed to play the hero and stop Yaz from ever getting hurt at all. Her clothes were starting to dry against her skin, stiff with blood that wasn’t her own, and she got to her feet on autopilot, beginning to strip off as her mind continued to race, exploring each scenario and possibility thoroughly until she’d formulated an optimum course of action that was – of course – far too late.

When she was garbed in nothing more than her underclothes she stumbled into her bathroom and gazed at herself in the mirror, hardly recognising the woman staring back at her. Her hair was in a state of disarray and her eyes were wide and haunted in a way that she usually fought to keep from being too evident. There were streaks of blood across her cheeks, and her arms were similarly stained up to the elbows, with a particularly ominous dark patch across the skin her shoulder where she’d carried Yaz back to the TARDIS, her wound seeping into her coat. Running a basin of water, she plunged her hands into it and let the scalding sting of it leech some of her guilt from her; felt vindicated by it, as though she deserved to hurt in the same way her friend currently did, and she moved her hands purposefully in the sink, twisting them together and watching scarlet eddies twist through the water as Yaz’s blood lifted from her skin. Reaching for a flannel, she washed her face and then her arms, before setting that aside and snatching a scrubbing brush from beside the basin and setting to work scouring at her hands, until they were no longer hued with the ferric rust of Yaz’s blood, but were instead pink and smarting from the heat and the bristles.

Then, and only then, did she dry herself off and find fresh clothes; with stinging hands, she headed back to the medbay, where she found Yaz more peacefully asleep than she had been earlier, the blankets arranged neatly around her and her face free from sweat. Ryan was sat beside her, one of Yaz’s hands held in both of his, but he leapt up when the Doctor entered, as though reporting for duty.

“It’s alright,” the Doctor told him wearily, and he sat back down and took Yaz’s hand again. “You don’t have to… where’s Graham?”

“Making tea. She’s not sweating anymore and she’s not shivering.”

“That’s good.”

“What _was_ that thing? Back there?”

“I don’t know,” the Doctor admitted, hovering at the end of Yaz’s bed. “Hate not knowing. But it doesn’t seem to be lethally venomous.”

“Why did it bite her?”

“I don’t know,” the Doctor felt another surge of guilt as she remembered the creature’s fate at her hands. “It might have been scared, or it might have just wanted to attack. I don’t know.”

“It’s lucky you found her, really… I dunno what would have happened otherwise, it’s…” he broke off, looking distressed, and the Doctor rested a hand on his shoulder.

“She’s going to be OK,” the Doctor said firmly, but she no longer knew if it was Ryan or herself that she needed to convince.

* * *

“Doctor?”

The voice was very faint, and as the Doctor struggled back to consciousness, she struggled to place it. Blinking hard and then rubbing sleep from her eyes, she was momentarily discombobulated by her surroundings, before realising she was in the medbay and then remembering with crashing horror precisely _why_ she was there. There was a dark shape in the bed beside her; across the room, the chair that Ryan had been dozing in was now empty; the Doctor supposed he’d returned to his own room, finding the seat an uncomfortable place to spend the night. She couldn’t blame him.

“Doctor?”

The Doctor looked back at the figure curled up in front of her. Yaz’s eyes were open and she was frowning at the Time Lady with confusion and mistrust as she clutched the blankets around herself.

“Where am I?”

“Medbay.”

“Why?”

“That thing attacked you. Took a chunk out of your shoulder and gave you a nasty bite. You’ve had a bad fever since I got you back here.”

“Why are you here?”

“What do you mean?” the Doctor frowned, failing to understand the question. “It’s my ship.”

“No, I mean… here. In the medbay.”

“Well, you’re hurt, and-”

“Why are you holding my hand?”

“Oh,” the Doctor blinked dully down at where their hands were entwined atop the covers. “Urm. Reassurance?”

Looking up, she was surprised to find Yaz’s eyes were bright with tears.

“Doctor…” Yaz turned her face away and mumbled: “I’m sorry for what I did in that cupboard.”

“Don’t be.”

“And I’m sorry for running off.”

“Don’t be.”

“And I’m sorry for… I just… I like you.”

“I like you too,” the Doctor said at once, giving Yaz’s hand a bolstering squeeze, but she knew deep down that this was not what her friend had meant.

“No, I mean I… I think I’m in love with you, and that frightens me to death, but I can’t help it… I’ve been trying to say or do anything, but I can’t keep it to myself anymore. And I’m sorry if that’s not… I’m sorry if you… and then you mentioned your wife and I just felt like a prize idiot for thinking that you know, maybe you liked me and maybe you’d look at me twice and maybe…”

“River and I are… complicated,” the Doctor caught sight of Yaz’s confused expression, and clarified: “My wife and I. It’s… not straightforward. I don’t think she knows about… you know, me being me yet. A woman, that is. And technically speaking, she is actually… well… dead.”

“She’s…”

“It’s complicated,” the Doctor reiterated miserably. “But it’s just… Yaz… it’s not that I don’t like you; I do, very much. But I can’t be the person you need, and I can’t be the person you deserve. I’m still learning so much; I’m still piecing myself back together after everything that happened on Gallifrey, and I’m still committed to a woman who is sort of dead but zipping up and down my timestream with a determination bordering on obsession – don’t tell her I said that – and it’s just… you don’t deserve someone whose head is in that kind of place.”

“But it’s you that I want.”

“I know,” the Doctor smiled sadly. “But I’d only break your heart… or you’d break mine. I’d have to watch you wither and die; I can’t begin to explain how that feels. I’m sorry, Yaz. I really am, I just…”

“It’s fine,” Yaz said quickly, giving the Doctor’s hand a squeeze, and the Doctor didn’t need to read her friend’s mind to know that she was lying. “Really. It’s fine… I’ll be fine. We’re fine. Aren’t we?”

“If you want us to be.”

“Well, I’m not giving you up.”

“You sound very sure of that.”

“Well, I’m not. They can prise you from my cold, dead hands,” Yaz quipped.

The Doctor let go of Yaz’s hand at once, sickened, and took half a step backwards, and Yaz seemed to realise what she’d said.

“Sorry,” Yaz mumbled, her cheeks flushing in the half-light of the round things on the walls. “That wasn’t… I shouldn’t have… I just… I don’t want this to change. And I’m sorry if I’ve made it weird now. Can we move on? Please?”

“Sure,” the Doctor said with a brightness she did not feel. “Of course. Yeah. Absolutely. We totally can. Fine. Yep.”

“Doctor?”

“Yeah?”

“That’s weird.”

“Sorry.”

“Look, I could murder a cup of tea. How about we have a cuppa? Normal enough?”

“Yeah,” the Doctor said with a weak smile. “Yeah, I can manage that.”

“Good, so I’ll have mine white with two sugars.”


End file.
